The Non-Believer/Non-Theist Thread.

Louis CK on heaven

 

I cannot really see any benefit in someone saying "I'll pray for you." I find it to be more like an inaction, especially when it comes to circumstances where consoling could be much better performed beyond simply reciting chants. It's a placebo, which has psychological comfort for those who believe strongly, but it does not escape the reality that it doesn't work at all. You'd think with all the prayers in the world, we would see a better humanity and consideration from such groups, but that's not really the case.

For many, oversimplification using methods of confirmation bias is most comforting and what better way to sensationalize your own life and existence than to suggest that something supernatural somehow took over your body, when something else more practical could be explained and proven. It's like the idea of ghosts. There are no such things as ghosts, but with the concept dualism ingrained in the human psyche, we are tricking our minds into thinking something is around us. Oversimplifying something on a wrongful nature.

And I still find some value in organized religious practices, notably the arts (music, stories, art, etc...). Hell, choral music is something I love hearing all the time. But I suppose it's due to my educational background in Catholic institutions.

 

We all decided to have a non religious service for my Nan and it was the best decision ever.
She was never religious herself didn't pray or anything and was a bit of a scoffer, she could get rid of a religious group from her front door in seconds flat, while still being classy.

Saying that, she always respected other peoples views (except my dads lol)

We had a professional speaker (also family members spoke) and it was a long service about her life, including her foibles even down to how when we would have a family holiday she would tell us to not unpack and she would complain instantly and get us moved somewhere more suitable for her family.

How Grandad would wait for her to fall asleep in the car then drive a lot faster as anything over 50 had her holding her seatbelt and a three hour drive to Devon would take seven hours with her in the car as she didn't like the motorway.

All these things made up a great life and we all realised god did not have much to do with it and we made her service about her.

 

That is incredibly touching and lovely.

 

Hell was invented by the church, says retired priest

SOURCE: http://urbanintellectuals.com/2015/...ed-by-the-church-to-control-people-with-fear/

This video is of an interview retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong did with Keith Morrison of Dateline NBC back in August of 2006.

Spong: I don’t think Hell exists. I happen to believe in life after death, but I don’t think it’s got a thing to do with reward and punishment. Religion is always in the control business, and that’s something people don’t really understand. It’s in a guilt-producing control business. And if you have Heaven as a place where you’re rewarded for you goodness, and Hell is a place where you’re punished for your evil, then you sort of have control of the population. And so they create this fiery place which has quite literally scared the Hell out of a lot of people, throughout Christian history. And it’s part of a control tactic.

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Morrison: But wait a minute. You’re saying that Hell, the idea of a place under the earth or somewhere you’re tormented for an eternity – is actually an invention of the church?

Spong: I think the church fired its furnaces hotter than anybody else. But I think there’s a sense in most religious life of reward and punishment in some form. The church doesn’t like for people to grow up, because you can’t control grown-ups. That’s why we talk about being born again. When you’re born again, you’re still a child. People don’t need to be born again. They need to grow up. They need to accept their responsibility for themselves and the world.

[ADSENSE2]
Morrison: What do you make of the theology which is pretty quite prominent these days in America, which is there is one guaranteed way not to go to hell; And that is to accept Jesus as your personal savior.

Spong: Yeah, I grew up in that tradition. Every church I know claims that ‘we are the true church’ – that they have some ultimate authority, ‘We have the infallible Pope,’ We have the Bible.’… The idea that the truth of God can be bound in any human system, by any human creed, by any human book, is almost beyond imagination for me.

I mean, God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindi or Buddhist. All of those are human systems, which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition. I walk through my tradition. But I don’t think my tradition defines God. It only points me to God.

 

Best pic I've seen in a while. Thanks, MS!

 

Always man! This thread never dies.

 

11 kinds of Bible verses Christians love to ignore

11 kinds of Bible verses Christians love to ignore​

1. Weird insults and curses. The Monty Python crew may have coined some of the best insults of the last 100 years: Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. But for centuries the reigning master was Shakespeare: It is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed ice.....

She lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. Ezekiel 23:20 NIV

You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. . . . The Lord will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head. Deuteronomy 28:30-31,35

2. Awkwardly useless commandments. The Bible is chock-a-block with do’s and don’ts. Some of them are simply statements of universal ethical principles, like do to others what you would have them do to you, or don’t lie, or don’t covet your neighbor’s possessions....

Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material. Leviticus 19:19

Ye shall not round the corners of your heads. Leviticus 19:27

3. Silly food rules. The early Hebrews probably didn’t have an obesity epidemic like the one that has spread around the globe today. Even so, one might think that if an unchanging and eternal God were going to give out food rules he might have considered the earnest Middle-American believers who would be coming along in 2014.....

All that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you. Leviticus 9:10

Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother’s milk. Exodus 23:19

4. Holy hangups about genitals. God, or the Bible writers, is hung up about sexual anatomy in a way many modern Christians, fortunately, are not. In “The Year of Living Biblically,” the author, A.J. Jacobs, attempts to obey Mosaic laws about menstruation. When his wife finds out what those laws actually are, she gives him the middle finger by sitting on every chair in the house.

When a woman has a discharge, if her discharge in her body is blood, she shall continue in her menstrual impurity for seven days; and whoever touches her shall be unclean until evening. Everything also on which she lies during her menstrual impurity shall be unclean, and everything on which she sits shall be unclean. Leviticus 15: 19-20

When men fight with one another, and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand. Deuteronomy 25:11-12

5. God’s temper tantrums. Modern Christians may talk about God as a loving father, or even a Jesus buddy, the kind you’d want to play golf with, but in reality Bible-God goes out of his way to be intimidating. Worse, he appears to lose control of his temper at times, lashing out like an oversized thwarted three-year-old; and his earthly representatives—including Jesus—do the same.

Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the Lord. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys. 2 Kings 2:23-25 NIV

Early in the morning, as Jesus was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered. Matthew 21:18-22 NIV

6. Times when the Bible God is worse than Satan. In the Bible, Satan is described as a roaring lion who prowls the earth, seeking whom he may devour. But if you actually read the stories, Satan doesn’t do much other than to tempt people into disobeying the dictates of Yahweh, who acts like a heavenly dictator with borderline personality disorder. God, by contrast, professes his undying love, kindness and mercy, but then commands his minions to commit brutal atrocities when he isn’t up for it himself. Some of the stories are so bad even Hollywood, with its passion for glorious biblical sex and violence, won’t touch them, especially the plentiful Bible stories about sexual slavery and human sacrifice.

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves. Numbers 31:17-18

He [Josiah] executed the priests of the pagan shrines on their own altars, and he burned human bones on the altars to desecrate them…. He did this in obedience to all the laws written in the scroll that Hilkiah the priest had found in the LORD’s Temple. Never before had there been a king like Josiah, who turned to the LORD with all his heart and soul and strength, obeying all the laws of Moses. And there has never been a king like him since. 2 Kings 23:20-25 NLT

7. Instructions for slave masters. The reality is that the Bible says much more in support of slavery than against it. Even the New Testament Jesus never says owning people is wrong. Instead, the Bible gives explicit instructions to masters and slaves. Awkward.

You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. Ephesians 6:5 NLT

8. Bizzare death penalties. Years ago, I wrote an article titled, “If the Bible Were Law Would You Qualify For the Death Penalty?” It identified 35 different offenses that earn a person capital punishment in the Bible. Hint: You probably qualify. And so does the dog who belongs to your kinky neighbor.

If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die. Deuteronomy 21:18-21

If a man has sex with an animal, he must be put to death, and the animal must be killed. Leviticus 20:15 NLT

9. Denigration of handicapped people. The yuck factor is probably wired into humanity at the level of instinct, a way to avoid contamination and pathogens. Shit smells bad to us, as does decaying flesh. Our revulsion at illness and injury fuels a whole Hollywood horror industry. The Bible writers had the same instincts, but unlike modern health professionals, who have the benefit of germ theory, they had no idea what was contagious and what wasn’t, and they blurred the ideas of physical purity with spiritual purity. Modern Christians largely escape their denigration of physical handicaps.

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the LORD. Deuteronomy 23:1 NRSV

Whosoever … hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookback, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken … He shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries. Leviticus 21:17-23 KJV

10. Moral edicts that demand too much. If much of the Bible gets ignored because it is morally irrelevant, immoral, outdated, or factually wrong, another portion gets ignored because it sets the bar too high, like putting divorce on par with—omg—homosexuality. If you want to send a conservative Bible-believer into a froth, try suggesting Jesus was a socialist. Then, when he goes all Jehovah on you, quote from the book of Ephesians.

Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same. Luke 3:11 NIV

Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place. Ephesians 5:4 NIV

11. Passages that are a waste of brain space and paper. Some years ago I worked on a website called Wisdom Commons, a library of timeless quotes and stories from many traditions. I had the idea that I would go through the Bible and pull out bits that were relevant, so I started reading.

 

Wow.

John Shelby Spong gave a clear and concise understanding of the game religion plays on people. His faith is too mature for most "believers".

 

Gentlemen, I have nothing further to add.

 

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I am Jewish, so, obviously, I am without Christ. I am hardly helpless, hopeless or lost. I know exactly who I am, and where I am going. I treat all people with respect, whether they're black, white, gay, straight, etc. I have known many people who call themselves religious because they attend houses of worship or know scripture. This does not make a person religious. It makes more sense to me that IF people believe in God and a hereafter, how we behave and how we treat other beings and our earth while we are here would determine where we end up as opposed to being hateful, hurting others and then in the end, turning to Jesus. A man once told me that Osama Bin Laden will go to heaven if he excerpts Christ, but I won't. Really? I don't know that I believe in God or heaven, but IF there is such a thing, this wouldn't make sense. I believe Jesus existed and was a loving, good, caring soul. He was supposedly all about love and forgiveness, so why do so many Christians disrespect groups of people such as gays and lesbians? Why would an innocent baby that wasn't baptised and dies not be allowed in heaven? I doubt Jesus would approve of that at all. I don't mean to be direspectful, but I do question these things. The problem with religion is that it is very dividing. I'm all about coming together.